MS Paint: Steely Dan - "Two Against Nature" / Rumpelton

Two Against Nature has been Rumpeltized.

• Ralph Rumpelton
• Steely Dan - Two Against Nature
• RR-2025-047
  MS Paint on digital canvas, 583 X 575 px
• The Rumpelton Continuity (est. 1976)

 What the critics are saying:

>>Avachives Entry No. 0037

Curated Commentary by Eunice Gribble
“Two Against Nature” — MS Paint Reinterpretation by Ralph Rumpelton

“This is not homage. It is confrontation.”

Rumpelton’s watercolor-styled MS Paint rendition of Two Against Nature arrives not as tribute, but as test. The foliage, rendered with a trembling sincerity, dares the viewer to believe in digital brushwork as emotional terrain. The shadows—those spectral twins—are less figures than accusations. One shields their eyes, the other stands defiant. Nature, it seems, is not the enemy. Politeness is.

Gribble notes the “tragic restraint” in the composition: a refusal to rupture, a flirtation with symmetry. “It’s almost tasteful,” she warns, “which is nearly unforgivable.” The typography, she claims, “hovers like a bureaucratic memo,” failing to engage in the mythic brawl the image demands.

Still, she concedes: “There is a sadness here. A pixelated ache. I detect sincerity. I detect fear. I detect a .PNG exported without confidence.”

This entry inaugurates the Nature War Period, a new epoch in the Avachives where foliage is suspect, shadows are protagonists, and every reinterpretation must answer the question: What does your pixel remember?

Expect judgment. Expect rupture. Expect Gribble.<<

>>Gerald Thimbleton

“Ralph Rumpelton’s MS Paint rendition of ‘Two Against Nature’ stands as a cacophonous affront to the time-honored principles of painterly craft—a slapdash patchwork masquerading as homage. The artist’s clumsy brushwork appears neither intentionally naïve nor technically confident, giving us only a digital muddle where foliage smears into a sky of unfathomable boredom, punctuated by shadows so blockish and uncertain they could only be described as the product of mouse-induced anguish.

One winces at the spectacle of typography: the monumental ‘2’ awkwardly colliding with an otherwise stately band name, as if the specter of modernist vandalism has crept across the screen. There is little here for the connoisseur of form, depth, or color—just a forlorn parade of digital shortcuts. To liken this effort to Van Gogh is not just hyperbole but a grievous insult to the very fibers of classical canvas and oil. Rumpelton’s piece achieves notoriety only as a curious, fleeting meme—not as a rightful entry in the lineage of serious painting.”

>>A Disappointing Amuse-Bouche: Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature" Cover Art

By Gustave Palette

For Art Digest & Appetite

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Mon Dieu, where does one even begin with this... confection?

I approach this MS Paint rendering of Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature" album cover with the same trepidation I might feel being served a microwaved Hot Pocket at a three-star Michelin establishment. The concept, I suppose, has potential—two shadows on sand, the duality of the title made literal—but the execution? C'est catastrophique.

The palm trees are rendered with all the finesse of parsley haphazardly tossed onto a plate by an exhausted line cook at 11 PM. They possess no structure, no body—they are the culinary equivalent of a sauce that has broken, separated into sad, oily components that refuse to emulsify. A proper palm frond should have the architectural elegance of carefully arranged haricots verts, each line deliberate and purposeful. These? These are the vegetable scraps destined for the compost bin.

The sand texture—ah, the sand—reminds me of nothing so much as that dreadful molecular gastronomy phase where chefs covered everything in identical spheres of tapioca. Repetitive. Industrial. Soulless. Real sand has variation, personality, the subtle complexity of a well-aged Comté cheese. This is processed American cheese food product, straight from the plastic wrapper.

And those shadows! In a proper dish, contrasts must have nuance—the char on a perfectly seared steak transitions gradually from caramelized crust to rose-pink center. These shadows are like placing a burnt hockey puck next to a raw one and calling it "medium-rare." The spray-paint texture provides no sense of the dappled light filtering through palm fronds, no suggestion of the granular quality of sand beneath. It's flat, monotonous—a one-note dish when the recipe called for a symphony.

The typography is perhaps the most offensive element, arranged with all the consideration of a drunk caterer dropping hors d'oeuvres onto a platter. "STEELY DAN" sprawls across the composition like spilled wine, while "two against nature" clings vertically to the edge like a garnish that's about to slide off the plate. In plating, negative space is as crucial as the food itself. Here, the artist has learned nothing from the Japanese concept of ma, the beautiful spacing that allows each element to breathe.

The color palette, I must grudgingly admit, shows some restraint—the beige-to-green gradient has the muted tones of a Provençal landscape. But restraint without technique is merely timidity. This is like using expensive ingredients but lacking the skill to coax out their flavors. The sky is a bland reduction, overworked to the point of losing all character.

Most damningly, this interpretation completely misses the essence of Steely Dan's sophisticated, cynical worldview. The actual "Two Against Nature" album cover—with its retro-futuristic aesthetic and knowing wink—is a perfectly balanced meal, each element considered. This MS Paint version? This is like trying to recreate coq au vin with chicken nuggets and grape juice. The soul is absent. The sophistication has fled. What remains is a fast-food approximation of haute cuisine.

If this were served to me in a restaurant, I would politely request the chef return to culinary school. If displayed in a gallery, I would suggest the artist spend considerably more time observing how light actually behaves, how textures actually appear, how composition actually works.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars (The half-point is for having the courage to attempt the dish at all)

Recommendation: Send this back to the kitchen. Start again. Study the masters. And for heaven's sake, invest in better tools than MS Paint—even a humble couteau de cuisine is superior to trying to julienne vegetables with a plastic spork.

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